Western Mail letters: Thursday, December 6, 2018

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We must value men and prevent suicide

The headlines are stark. The number of men who die by suicide should be considered a national emergency. It’s time to break the taboo and speak up.

The charity Both Parents Matter www.fnf-bpm.org.uk was founded from the deep belief that every child should grow up knowing that both parents love them and that their extended families love them too. It was founded to help children.

What the charity found was horrific, story after story of fathers who were decent men who were being subjected to domestic abuse (bones broken, stabbed, scalded, driven at, controlled); fathers who had false allegations made against them, fathers who were under appalling stress, fathers who were suicidal.

The charity has very limited means but it supports these men as best it can. It has gained a lot of experience and knowledge and would willingly share this and work with the Welsh Government and the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee.

Lady Lloyd Jones

Radyr, Cardiff

People’s Vote the logical way forward

Mick Antoniw (Western Mail, December 5) believes that a general election will increasingly become accepted as the only way to give people a real choice in terms of Brexit.

There is a major flaw in this statement. Neither of the main parties is united on their Brexit stance. Consequently, whatever their manifestos may say there could be no guarantee that those parties could deliver on their pledge. Opinion polls are showing increasing support for a People’s Vote which is now favoured by a much larger percentage of the electorate than those who oppose it.

He says that a vote in Parliament for another referendum would not be binding. Well, the referendum held two years ago was not binding, but try telling that to Brexiteers. Like most Labour politicians, he sees the current impasse as a chance for Labour to get back into power in Westminster. However, this is not borne out by opinion polls and with Jeremy Corbyn apparently unable to understand that the EU will not enter into further negotiations, there seems little hope of him becoming Prime Minister with a working majority.

Whatever the difficulties of calling another referendum, it must be done. We don’t need any time hustings and the like as we have been bombarded with the views of politicians and others for the last two years. When Mrs May loses the vote next week, the only logical outcome is to call for the People’s Vote.

Alan Rumble

Cardiff

Heal divisions with a second referendum

A recent report from accountants Ernst & Young and the Centre for Towns highlights the way in which the distribution of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects has, over the past 20 years, become overwhelmingly in favour of our large, core cities at the expense of towns and smaller communities. Apart from core cities only university towns have enjoyed any increase in the share of projects. Other communities referred to in the report, be they seaside, commuter, ex-industrial, market or new towns, have all seen their slice of the FDI cake get smaller.

Intended or not, the authors have provided a neat metaphor for the voting pattern in the Brexit referendum. Of the 20 core cities only three voted Leave. University towns voted generally Remain. Ex-industrial towns, famously Stoke and Sunderland, voted Leave. Seaside towns ditto.

It is doubtful whether the local level of FDI in such places was on people’s minds as they went into the polling booth. Much more likely was the sense that public services and the personal circumstances in which they found themselves had deteriorated over the years. They had been let down by successive generations of politicians in thrall to the free market who let the FDI projects go where they may, and who have failed to respond to the post-2008 challenges. Throw in a dash of national chauvinism, a sprinkling of racism and promises of jam tomorrow if we could only get out from under Brussels, and there you have it.

The EU of course has no say in the distribution of FDI projects. It has no say in the national industrial strategy of member states, or how they distribute their wealth. It bears no responsibility for the greatest rift in our social fabric in living memory. Yet on Sunday we had the spectacle of Michael Gove opining that calling for a second referendum would “rip apart the social fabric of the UK”.

Our social fabric was ripped apart by Dodgy Dave’s referendum, providing as it did a platform for chancers like Gove, Johnson and their sidekick, Farage. Our politicians are torn hither and yon by May’s Dodgy Deal and Corbyn’s “constructive ambiguity.” No Deal will impact most severely upon those areas which voted Leave and could provide a springboard for demagogues. Both will keep us arguing with each other for years.

A second referendum may be our best hope of healing the wounds by rejecting both.

Robin Lynn

Sully, Penarth

Listen to exporters, they are UK’s future

Alun Cairns MP held a public meeting on Brexit in Cowbridge last Friday. It was clear that some Brexiters will not admit that they’ve been fooled by opportunist pranksters – Tim Martin, Boris Johnson, James Dyson, Patrick Minford, etc. There are many who would like the UK to resign from the sovereign nations making up the European Union with no agreements in place and put the nation at the mercy of the other 164 WTO members – while disconnecting our scientists from great collaborative projects, creating a hard border somewhere around Northern Ireland and restricting our most entrepreneurial people to this island.

It must also be noted that political fantasies do not sell goods or services. We really should be listening to those involved in exporting from the UK, not the popularists who dismiss facts.

Donald Trump’s dislike of the WTO and refusal to sanction the appointment of new judges puts the existence of the WTO under threat. There are presently only three WTO judges with four seats vacant. The WTO is a bureaucratic, inefficient organisation and struggling to change with the world. Many countries are calling for urgent, radical reform of the WTO. Ironically, the EU will be a leading player in any reform.

The WTO option would devastate many British businesses. Not just because of tariffs and border delays, but also quotas. The UK government hasn’t been able to agree revised “terms of trade” because other nations including South Korea, Chile, China, Russia and the US are looking for a better deal for their companies at the expense of UK companies. The UK needs change. Rather than burning our businesses and commitments to other nations, we need to tackle inequality here by minimising taxes on employment and business and instead taxing unearned income and the holding of finite resources.

Ian Perry

Vale of Glamorgan

Thanks for your efforts and get well very soon

I would like to pay a special tribute to my former colleague and friend Phil Jones.

Phil has campaigned tirelessly all over the UK and Luxemberg for the past 16 years trying to get justice for his former colleagues and their families from ASW Cardiff, and hundreds of thousands of families in the FAS who are being denied the pensions that are rightfully theirs by successive governments’ failed pension policies.

Phil has been in extremely bad health these past three years, and has had major surgery, he is in hospital at present, but has found time to meet politicians in Cardiff Bay, and London on many occasions, to put a case for full pension compensation, 100%, for those in the FAS. Phil, families owe you big time for your monumental efforts. Get well soon, Phil.

John Benson

Dinas Powis

All doomed without the sandwich-makers

I take exception to the quote you extracted from City Deal programme director Kellie Beirne’s recent speech – “We cannot give hope to kids by offering them jobs making sandwiches.”

Yes, we need graduate jobs and tech entrepreneurs to drive the Welsh economy, but without someone making good sandwiches, they will starve. Those in charge of the economy need to think about the whole of the fabric which makes up a modern economy. Wales needs sandwich-makers with a pride in making good-quality fresh sandwiches, just as much as leaders of the City Deal. They need to be valued for their contribution.

The great prophet Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a running joke about the uselessness of telephone sanitisers in business offices. In the end a galaxy dies out because of a plague started from an infected telephone. Without cleaners and carers and sandwich-makers, in the long run we are all doomed.